At St Pancras Old Churchyard
The Hardy Tree
As I arrived at Old St Pancras Churchyard, the Verger was sweeping leaves from the steps and she informed me there was a wedding taking place inside the church. Yet I was more than happy to explore this most ancient of central London churchyards for an hour while the nuptials were in progress.
The churchyard itself is upon a raised mound that is the result of all the hundreds of thousands of burials upon this ground which is claimed to be one of the earliest sites of Christian worship in London, recorded by the Maximilian Mission as already established by the year 324. Such is the proximity of St Pancras Station, you can hear the announcements from the platforms even as you wander among the tombs, yet an age-old atmosphere of tranquillity prevails here that cannot be dispelled by the chaos and cacophony of contemporary King’s Cross and St Pancras.
However, the railway has encroached upon the churchyard increasingly over the years and, in the eighteen-sixties, architect Arthur Blomfield, employed Thomas Hardy as his deputy, responsible for exhumations of the dead. Tombstones were arranged around an ash tree which has absorbed some of them into its trunk over time and acquired the name ‘The Hardy Tree,’ commemorating this unlikely employment for the young novelist whose subsequent literary works express such an inescapable morbidity.
Once the bride and groom emerged from the church door, the Verger ushered me in through the back and I was delighted by the intimate quality of the church interior, studded with some impressive old monuments. The Verger relished telling the tale of St Pancras, beheaded by the Emperor Diocletian in Rome in 304 at the age of fourteen for refusing to renounce his faith.
When the cloth had been removed from the altar after the ceremony, I was able to view the small sixth century altar stone, marked with five crosses of curious design, of which the only other examples are upon the tomb of Eithne, mother of St Columba, on the Hebridean island of Luing, dated to 567. A modest piece of Kentish rag stone, there is a legend this once served as an altar for St Augustine.
“We try to fall down every two hundred years,” explained the Verger breezily, drawing my attention to the alarming cracks in the wall and outlining the elaborate history of collapse and rebuilding that has produced the appealing architectural palimpsest you discover today.
Outside in the June sunshine, the newly-married couple were getting their wedding photographs taken, while rough sleepers slumbered among the graves just as the long-gone rested beneath the grass. A text carved nearby the entrance of the church reads “And I am here in a place beyond desire and fear,” describing the quality of this mysterious enclave in the heart of London perfectly.
The Vestry
St Pancras Coroners
Sir John Soane’s tomb of 1837 inspired Giles Gilbert Scott’s design for the telephone box
Baroness Burdett Coutts was responsible for the vast gothic memorial sundial
Mary Wollstonecraft, born in Spitalfields and buried in Bournemouth, but commemorated here with her husband William Godwin
The grave of Charles Dickens’ school teacher, William Jones, believed to be the inspiration for the ferocious Mr Creakle in David Copperfield. “By far the most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know … one of the worst tempered men perhaps that ever lived.”
Norman stonework uncovered in the renovation of 1848
The seventh century altar stone is incised with crosses of Celtic design
“O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!”
“We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
‘I know not which I am!’”
Thomas Hardy, The Levelled Churchyard (1882)
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Thomas Bewick’s Cat
I discovered a copy of Thoms Bewick’s General History of Quadrupeds from 1824 in the Spitalfields Antiques Market and – of course – I turned first to his entry upon the domestic cat.
To describe an animal so well known might seem a superfluous task – we shall only, therefore, select some of its peculiarities as are least obvious and may have escaped the notice of inattentive observers.
It is generally remarked that Cats can see in the dark, but though this is not absolutely the case, yet it is certain that they can see with much less light than other animals, owing to the peculiar structure of their eyes – the pupils of which are capable of being contracted or dilated in proportion to the degree of light by which they are affected. The pupil of the Cat, during the day, is perpetually contracted and it is with difficulty that it can see in strong light, but in the twilight the pupil regains its natural roundness, the animal enjoys perfect vision and takes advantage of this superiority to discover and surprise its prey.
The cry of the Cat is loud, piercing and clamorous, and whether expressive of anger or of love is equally violent and hideous. Its call may be heard at a great distance and is so well known to the whole fraternity that, on some occasions, several hundred Cats have been brought together from different parts. Invited by the piercing cries of distress from a suffering fellow creature, they assemble in crowds and with loud squalls and yells express their horrid sympathies. They frequently tear the miserable object to pieces and, with the most blind and furious rage, fall upon each other, killing and wounding indiscriminately, till there is scarcely one left. These terrible conflicts happen only in the night.
The Cat is particularly averse to water, cold and bad smells. It is fond of certain perfumes but is more particularly attracted by the smell of valerian and cat mint – it rubs itself against them and if not prevented will infallibly destroy them.
Though extremely useful in destroying the vermin that infest our houses, the Cat seems little attached to the persons of those who afford it protection. It appears to be under no subjection and acts only for itself.
All its views are confined to the place where it has been brought up. If carried elsewhere, it seems lost and bewildered, and frequently takes the first opportunity of escaping to its former haunts. Frequent instances are recollected of Cats having returned to the place from whence they have been carried, though at many miles distance, and even across rivers, where they could not possibly have any knowledge of the road or the situation that would apparently lead them to it.
In the time of Hoel the Good, King of Wales, who died in the year 948, laws were made to fix the different prices of animals, among which the Cat was included as being at that period of great importance on account if its scarceness and utility. The price of a kitten was fixed at one penny, till proof could be given of its having caught a mouse twopence, after which it was rated as fourpence which was a great sum in those days.
If anyone should steal or kill the Cat that guarded the Prince’s granary, he was either to forfeit a milk ewe, or her fleece and lamb, or as much wheat as when poured on the Cat suspended by its tail would form a heap high enough to cover the tip of the former.
Hence we may conclude that Cats were not originally native of these islands, and from the great care taken to improve and preserve the breed of this prolific creature, we may suppose, were but little known in that period. Whatever credit we may allow to the circumstances of the well known story of Whittington and his Cat, it is another proof of the great value set upon this animal in former times.
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Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat
Zareena Malik, Spitalfields Market Trader
Zareena Malik in Spitalfields Market
There have been changes in the Old Spitalfields Market recently, most notably the construction of permanent serving hatches at the centre of the market selling more expensive food. This development is part of the management’s plan to maximise income by introducing new upscale traders and increasing rents, yet the repercussions of this policy for some of the long-establised traders have been devastating.
Souvenir-seller Zareena Malik was ejected from the market recently at short notice and she told me that many as seven other traders were forced to leave the same time. The Spitalfields Market has been an important asset for people in the East End for centuries and markets have always been essential to London as arenas of opportunity and entrepreneurship, which makes Zareena’s story especially disappointing.
“In 2009, I was just looking for a place to have a stall and sell things, so I asked someone who told me I should go to Commercial Rd to buy stock and, while I was looking for the place, I came here to the Spitalfields Market by accident. So I asked for a stall and they said I could have one. At that time, it was just £10 rent for a stall for three days on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So me and my son, Adnan, we started selling souvenirs of London – t-shirts, key-rings and magnets – and we were there six days a week. There was no market on Saturdays then and the rent for a stall on Sunday was £65.
It was very slow for us because we did not get many tourists at that time but slowly it improved. We were selling and buying but – to be honest – we never made any money. Sometimes we took £100 a day but once you have paid the rent and covered the costs of eating and travelling for two people, you can take half of that away.
Luckily, I have two sons and two daughters and my other son and my daughters had jobs. We all live together and we share all the bills and the rent and everything. Sometimes I made some money and other times I did not, but gradually my business began to work. I wake up each day at five and I used to leave to come to Spitalfields at seven by train.
I had storage in the market basement for my stock and I had to carry it up every day which was really hard work. I got a big trolley and pushed it into the lift and across the market. Originally, my stall was in the middle of the market but then they built the food serving hatches and moved me to the side with six or seven stalls in front of me and my turnover fell to a quarter. So I asked the management to give me another place because nobody came to the part of the market where I was and I could not sell anything.
Last year, I went back to my country for a visit and, when I came back last October, the lift which I used to transport my stock from the basement was not working, it was shut down for three weeks. They gave me somewhere to store my stock upstairs instead but then someone stole between £1700-£1800 of my things. There was no adequate security.
For many years, I have had a good relationship with the Old Spitalfields Market management, so I do not understand what has gone wrong. They never gave me any reason. The manager came to me on a Wednesday and said, ‘I have to tell you something – you can’t trade here anymore.’ I asked, ‘Please give me some time to clear my stock.’ At that time, I was only trading Monday to Wednesday at £20 rent a day, because having a stall at the weekends had become too expensive for me – £75 on Saturday and £85 on Sunday.
They spoke to me on a Wednesday and they gave me three days in the next week before I left. But then my daughter Natasha tweeted, criticising what they had done to me, and they told me not to come back. Essentially, they gave me no notice. I had already bought my summer stock. If I had been given a month, I could have reduced my stock and made plans to go elsewhere.
I am not that strong, but I believe it is wrong what they are doing because there are many needy people who want to sell their things and their livelihoods depend upon their stalls. They should have given me some time to clear my stock. I cannot understand why they asked me to leave or whether there is something wrong with me or my stock. They never told me that they did not like me selling souvenirs or asked me to bring something else. They could have told me that my stuff was not good enough for them and I was not allowed to sell it there. I asked if I could bring my own knitting to sell instead but still they said ‘no.’ I do not know what I am going to do with my stock now. Maybe I can find another covered market where I can set up my stall?”
Zareena Malik
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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On Publication Day For Adam Dant
Today is publication day for Adam Dant’s magnum opus MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND published by Spitalfields Life Books & Batsford. As you read these words, Adam is sitting in his studio, signing and doing a drawing in every copy that was pre-ordered, which we will be mailing out in the next few days. Click here to order a signed copy
There are two forthcoming exhibitions of Adam’s maps in Knightsbridge and in Spitalfields, and Adam is giving illustrated lectures about his work at The Wanstead Tap in Forest Gate and Stanfords in Covent Garden. You are invited to join us in a celebration at both exhibition openings and details of how to book for the lectures are below.
THURSDAY 21st JUNE 7:30pm: Lecture at THE WANSTEAD TAP, 352 Winchelsea Rd, E7. Click here to book
TUESDAY 26th JUNE 6:30pm: Lecture at STANFORDS, 12-14 Long Acre, WC2. Click here to book
29th JUNE – 14th JULY: Exhibition of Maps of London at THE MAP HOUSE, 54 Beauchamp Place, SW3. Opening Thursday 28th June 6 – 8:30pm
5th – 22nd JULY: Exhibition of Maps of the East End at THE TOWN HOUSE, 5 Fournier St, E1. Opening Thursday 5th July 6 – 8.30pm
The Gentle Author visited Adam Dant in his studio in Club Row off Redchurch Street to learn of the origin of his fascination with drawing maps and the pursuit of creative cartography.
The Gentle Author – What brought you to the East End of London?
Adam Dant – I came here in 1993, directly from Rome where I spent a year as the Rome Scholar in Printmaking at the British School. I had often visited Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane markets in the past and, growing up in Cambridge, always entered London via Liverpool Street Station. The badly-lit, derelict streets surrounding Spitalfields Market where meths drinkers gathered around bonfires of orange boxes seemed very dark and dodgy – quite the antithesis of Cambridge with its culture of Reason, savoir faire and sandstone gothic pinnacles. On the evening I returned from Rome, the artists Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas were hosting the closing party for their shop in the Bethnal Green Road and I bought bottles of brown ale from The Dolphin on what seemed to be a very gloomy Redchurch Street, unaware that I would be moving to this neighbourhood within a few weeks.
The Gentle Author – Tell me about your studio.
Adam Dant – Before I moved in, this building was a mini cab office but it was forced to close because the massive aerial on the roof was interfering with neighbours’ television signals. I used to take cabs from here, and I have a vague memory of walking past one evening and seeing it being attacked by a mob of angry scaffold-pole-wielding rival mini cab drivers. Inside it was a mess, a filthy grey carpet with haphazardly-trimmed edges and a couple of Space Invaders games in the corner. I lived here in my studio on Club Row for several years when I was a bachelor. When I moved in, I found I had the benefit of half a dozen phone lines and a stack of business cards with a blue car graphic and the words Tower Cars, Fully Insuranced. These ‘fully insuranced’ owners had sawn all the bannisters off the staircase which had a length of carpet nailed to it in a random fashion. Upstairs, an ancient water heater held together with dried-out masking tape was dripping in the corner and chicken wire covered the windows.
The Gentle Author – Did you find yourself part of a community?
Adam Dant – Yes, the community I entered and which coalesced around me was quite tight, due in part I think to the geography of the neighbourhood which felt like a walled enclave. It was called The Boundary. The Bengali people who lived on the Boundary Estate worshipped at two mosques on Redchurch Street and ran the butcher’s shops, grocers and garment factories, sometimes socialising at St Hilda’s, our local community centre – where I went to play badminton and run off pamphlets on the ancient Gestetner printing machine.
Here on Redchurch Street, my neighbours worked mostly in creative fields. There were furniture designers, a stained glass artist, a saxophonist, a gang of Italian lesbian anarchists who drove round in a fiat cinquecento painted in pink leopardskin, a playwright, a documentary filmmaker, a rubber garment maker and many more. They lived in the curious collection of abandoned warehouses, shops and offices, and were to be found every night in The Owl & Pussycat, an ex-dog-fighting pub, where the area’s history was a frequent subject of discussion. Everyone had read Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago and knew the exact location of Shakespeare’s original Theatre. They spoke about the arcane origins of the street names, claimed that a ‘ley line’ ran directly through the nicest house and on towards the bandstand at Arnold Circus.
The Gentle Author – What attracts you to draw maps?
Adam Dant – I think my Map of Shoreditch in Dreams illustrates why cartography as a visual form appeals to me. The familiar, the quotidian and the eternal elements of a place can all be captured on a map, with the streets, the topography and the features providing the language to manifest a precise vision of a subjective reality, which might otherwise be overlooked in favour of a more mundane perspective.
In producing my maps, I seek to depart from the obvious and superficially useful qualities of cartography. Instead, by pursuing unexpected, unlikely or challenging methods of structuring or rendering the landscape of a place on paper, I hope the outcome is a work of art rather than just a means to get from A to B.
A map can be a puzzle or a game – a pictorial space where a viewer can travel through time and project themselves into history. Unlike a photograph or a topographic view, which records a location in a moment in time, a map is a representation of a place where we continue to extend the threads of physical history even if these are no longer visible due to being buried or trodden underfoot.
Even when the buildings remain, the sites of our daily engagements and our cherished urban nooks and crannies are constantly being refashioned and repurposed until they disappear. The layout of our streets are dug up, rationalised and reordered. Consequently, our cities get transformed beyond recognition. Yet even when they are razed to the ground, all the places where we walk are essentially constant. In the widest and most profound sense, they part of a cosmic cartography that is eternal, infinite and immutable. As long as we live, they live in whatever form we care to imagine them .
The Gentle Author – How is it possible to draw more than one map of the same place?
Adam Dant – Many of my maps depict the immediate locale of my home and studio. Although my original intention in making a different map of Shoreditch every year was to familiarise myself with the area where I had chosen to live and work, I soon realised these maps were also a means of establishing my presence and identity in this place.
Just as different artists will each the see same scene from their own perspectives, similarly one person can recreate the topography of a place in diverse ways on diverse occasions. There are so many contingencies when we look at a map, and we can chose to interpret these contingencies or we can we choose to take it at face value. An obvious example of this is my invention of the art historical orthodoxy known as Underneathism, depicting the world as viewed from beneath.
When the familiar ‘God’s eye’ view of the earth is inverted, the resultant perspective appears strangely malevolent. Yet Underneathism also exposes the familiar reality of isometric views -utilised by Google street mapping and video games – as equally artificial. Their use of this perspective only appears to us to be the natural order because of our exposure to it through years of constant use.
After a day spent in my studio creating Underneathean views, I found that stepping out into the street was as disorientating for me as it must have been for a Londoner of the eighteenth century to have been lifted up from the beer garden of a Hackney pub in a hot air balloon.
The Gentle Author – Are some maps better than others?
Adam Dant – Like the canon of painting or sculpture, the canon of cartography – particularly maps of London – is defined by historic moments embodied in innovative fashion and new discoveries described with prescient and appropriate perfection. The resulting maps are often born of unusual imperatives and spring from a particular circumstance. Just such an example is Harry Beck’s 1931 map of the London Underground. Despite millions of Londoners seeing it, using it and touching it everyday, it continues to reveal itself as a cartographic wonder.
Unlike a famous painting or sculpture, a map can be altered, annotated, improved and fiddled with many times without impugning its integrity or compromising its innate expression. In the creation of my maps, I often start with a basic template to which I pin and glue a bunch of stuff. My work in progress often looks like those huge table maps you see in war films, with models of boats and submarines pushed across them by smart young members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force wielding roulette rakes.
The map becomes fascinating to me when everything is in place, like the frozen moment of theatrical denouement in the tableau for a history painting. The pleasure of casting your eyes over a completed map is contingent on pinning down such a moment in its evolution, while the subject is at its most interesting – such as when the engraver Wencelas Hollar depicted the City of London viewed from the South Bank immediately preceding the Great Fire of 1666 and, shortly afterwards, during the conflagration.
The Gentle Author – What do you look for in a map?
Adam Dant – There are so many different kinds of map! There are maps that fill entire corridors, like those of my supposed ancestor, Ignazio Danti, at the Vatican Palace and then there are maps with covers designed by artists and proffered by London Underground, that you can slip in your top pocket. Although we need maps to show us how to get from here to there, once the map is in our hands we want to feel like the pirate who has the only existing means of finding where the treasure is buried.
The Gentle Author – What do you say to people who complain they get lost following your maps?
Adam Dant – You are holding it upside down!
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts.
Down The Roman Road
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I took advantage of the summer weather to enjoy an excursion down the Roman Rd, the heartland of the East End’s culture of family businesses, and we met the people behind three of the most popular shops.
Robert, Phoebe & Jill Myers with Teddy at Sew Amazing
Robert Myers – “My dad, Alfie, started the business in 1947 in Stoke Newington Church St and he was there over fifty years before we moved here in 2000. His elder sister lent him eight pounds, which he paid off over a year, and he started the business on his own when he came out of the army. My father had a partner who ran up a lot of debt and vanished to Australia, so he had to work for another two years to pay that off. My dad was a pretty good sewing machine engineer. The shop was called A. Myers, Sewing Machines. He rented for the first twenty years before he wrote to the owners and told them he was fed up paying rent and was either going to move or buy the premises, so they sold it to him.
I joined the business in 1973, straight from school at seventeen years old. I wanted to do anything engineering and my first choice was the auto trade but it didn’t work out. So I worked with my dad. He said, ‘Give it a year and see if you like it.’ We went into the wholesale trade and I enjoyed driving to Europe. We got big at one time but there was no money in it, so we have gone back to how we started.
Today, we supply machines to local schools and industry as well our individual customers. My wife Jill handles the haberdashery side of the business and my cousin Mandi, she is a sewing machine engineer and she has been working with me for thirteen years. It is such a specialised trade and we have the knowledge. I have got a lot of knowledge but 80% of it is useless because there is no application for it. I can repair almost any sewing machine.
At the peak of the garment trade, there were perhaps fifteen or twenty sewing machines suppliers in Whitechapel area. Some specialised in textiles, some in hat makers and others in leather and footwear. Because we are more specialised we find there is an appreciation for our work. When people buy a sewing machine from us, we don’t just give it to them in a box, we sit them down and show them how to use it. We work a lot for disabled people and I adapt machines for them to use. I love people who have a disability and want to be creative, and it shocks me that other companies won’t be bothered with them. I enjoy the challenge.
I like working on old industrial machines. We have some here over a hundred years old and still in good working order. If you have the knowledge, you can repair them indefinitely. They are metal with nice big screws that can be tightened up. We stock thousands of spare components for machines going back eighty or a hundred years. It’s a little bit special.”
Sew Amazing, 80 St Stephen’s Rd, E3 5JL
‘I have got a lot of knowledge but 80% of it is useless’
Annette Wakerley at Thompson’s DIY
Annette Wakerley – “Four generations of my family have been in this shop. My grandad, George Thompson, had four sons and my dad, Kenneth Thompson, took over the business and it went from him to me and my brother Mark Thompson. He’s round the back and I look after the shop, but Katie my daughter is taking over soon. She is doing all our webpages at the moment and bringing new life into it. I was born into this and I have been here fifty-three years, but the business has been here sixty-five years now. They had a place in Stroudly Walk in Bow before this place became available, it used to be a house and a shop but they converted the whole building into a shop.
All shops are going through hard times at the moment and I think we have to change in order to survive. We are developing our website but we believe personal attention to our customers is paramount. Fifty per cent of our customers have been with us forever and the others are new. There is a lot of letting round here so people only stay a couple of years and they come to us when need to repair the property before they so they can get their deposit back. People are busy with decorating during the summer when the weather is nice. Yet there is still a market for draught excluders even at this time of year. We hold a stock of around 12, 000 different items. I do know roughly how you use each item and, if I don’t, my brother does.
I am locksmith so I deal with all the keys and my daughter has just passed her test to be a locksmith as well, so she is out on a job now.”
Thompson’s DIY, 444 Roman Rd, E3 5LU
‘Four generations of my family have been in this shop’
Sharon Adams at Dennington’s
Sharon Adams – “This shop has only been here twelve years but before that it was on the corner since the nineteen-fifties. The Denningtons all died a long time ago but my dad worked for them for years and became a director of the company and took the business over in the seventies. He was a porter at the Covent Garden flower market and Mr Dennington said, ‘Would you like to come and work for me?’ That was how they met. There were five shops at that time, Whitechapel, Bow, Forest Gate plus two shops and a flower stall in the Roman Rd. When my dad retired twelve years ago, my brother came into the business and we took it over together. Originally, I was a Saturday girl when I was fourteen years old and I used to spend my wages on dinky toys for my little brother that I bought From Gary Arber’s shop. I am sixty now and my son Lee runs the business today.
We just had eighty-five flower pieces go out to a funeral, our whole basement is for making wreaths. We are more of a funeral place than anything else, there are more funerals than weddings here.”
Denningtons, 464 Roman Rd, E3 5LX
‘I was a Saturday girl when I was fourteen years old’
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Visit The Secret Gardens Of Spitalfields
Eight gardens in Spitalfields are open for visitors on Saturday 16th June from 11am – 4pm. Tickets cost £14 to visit them all and you can find details at the website of the National Gardens Scheme.
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At Snappy Snaps In Bishopsgate
Pravin & Hansa Raval
You might think that all the family businesses had gone from Bishopsgate long ago, yet – despite its nationwide ubiquity – Snappy Snaps is an independently-owned franchise, and Pravin & Hansa Raval have run their own shop opposite Liverpool St Station for nearly thirty years.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I paid them a visit recently and were delighted to learn about the quiet revolution in photography that is happening at this moment. More people are making prints of their photographs than ever before thanks to new technology that permits images to be printed instantly and cheaply direct from mobile phones.
Hansa revealed to me that the most films ever delivered for processing was the morning after the millennium when three hundred and twenty seven were brought in to her shop, five hundred and thirty-seven that day in total, and she is proud to report that they never lost one.
Snappy Snaps require their franchise holders to wear captioned name badges, so Pravin sports one saying ‘Big Boss’ while Hansa’s declares she is ‘The Wise One.’ Thus Sarah & I were delighted to sit down with the Big Boss and The Wise One in the basement studio at 220 Bishopsgate to hear the story of their business from Pravin and learn about the changing trends in photography over the past quarter century.
“We got the lease in March 1992 and had the shop fitted and opened here that November and started trading on Bishopsgate. Previously it had been a BMW garage but when we took it over it was an empty building and we were the first retail business on this site. The street was completely barren then with just banks, building societies and offices but the area now is unrecognisable and we have seen it come up. When we first came out of Liverpool St Station, I said to Hansa, ‘Do we really want to take that?’ but we risked it and here we are all these years later. Apart from the newsagent, we are the only family business in Bishopsgate as far as we know.
The Snappy Snaps company is owned by Timpsons Shoe Repair who are the largest retail landlords in this country with over a thousand outlets. John Timpson who owns the company has a different way of doing business, he believes in ‘upside-down management’ which recognises that the people running the shops know his business better than he does. He comes in here quite often, making surprise visits and coming to have a chat with us to ask if we have any issues. He has a philosophy of visiting every business once a year.
My wife Hansa has a Masters Degree in Chemistry and I have a Master Degree in Pharmacology. We have completely different backgrounds to what we do now. Hansa was an analytical chemist but she left my job and started up the business. The pharmaceutical business in this country in the late eighties was going through a difficult time and it got the stage where we felt we needed to have our own business, something we could do ourselves and control our lives. It could have been a senior citizens’ home or a hotel, it could have been anything really.
We ended up at Snappy Snaps because one of my friends in the Territorial Army told me of someone who had just started a business with Snappy Snaps and he sent me the information and here we are. We had three Snappy Snaps in this area at one point, one in Farringdon and Aldgate as well but we are winding down now so we sold those. We used to run three enterprises from here and Hansa was the mastermind behind the technical side of things.
I left my job and joined Hansa in 1999. This is very much a personal business and we are here all the time and we also communicate with our customers online, sending and getting images by email. Our main business now is passport photography which means we have to understand the specific requirements for our customers.
When we started it was people bringing films to us for developing and printing but then it slowly went to digital. When we started our customers were mainly insurance companies who used film to record damage but that started dying in the late nineties when digital cameras came out, yet they still came to us because prints were important. We can offer prints from any image captured digitally. I think people always wanted to have prints but the quality is not there from home printers and we can offer cheaper prints at higher quality. The device that people use primarily now is the smartphone. Some of the most amazing pictures we see now are taken on mobile phones. For the first time in history, everyone is walking around with a camera all the time and the quality of some these pictures is astonishing.
We can download pictures wirelessly from phones and print them instantly. Taking a picture from a mobile phone is easy but getting a good print is more difficult. A lot of things can be done but some coaching of the customers is required and that is what we enjoy. Young people are coming in with film for developing now, it has become very popular again but I find myself teaching an eighteen year old how to load a camera. They trust us and I teach them about speed of film and exposure then I see their photography improve with each film they bring in for developing. We are rejuvenated by it.”
Hansa, The Wise One
Pravin, Big Boss
Snappy Snaps, 220 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QD
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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The Romance of Old Bishopsgate
